Australian censors have rated moe alchemy RPG Atelier Totori Plus as “R18+” for its “references to sexual violence,” “high impact” violence, “moderate” sex, and “themes” – a higher rating than they found fit to give any of the GTA, Hitman or Call of Duty games.

The Australian government only recently introduced the “R18+” rating as a way of offering a midpoint between “15+” and “unrated” – although it is still hard to see how Totori and company bopping cute monsters or cavorting in the occasional tame bikini puts the title in the same territory as typical top tier AAA slaughterfests.

The privilege of being the first game endorsed as being R18+ also went to another Tecmo published title – Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor Edge for its “high impact bloody violence,” although again it is hard to see how an Atelier title ended up in the same classification.

There may however be hope yet for the Atelier series (or else Australia’s censors simply hate Kishida Mel) – busty Ayesha’s outing (English version due March) received an “M” as well, although this is still a far cry from the original Atelier Totori’s “PG.”

...A brutal fighting game gets a lower violence score when compared to an rpg series with very little, if any blood and extremely tame rpg monsters; the worst being a dragon that most people never encounter?

Meanwhile, the new Tomb Raider, a game in which you graphically execute people by shotgunning them to the face at point-blank range, gets a lower violence rating and is okay for 15 year olds to play. Dead Space 3? Also less violent. The same rating board gave the original PS3 version of Atelier Totori a "PG" rating for "Mild violence and infrequent coarse language", a full three ratings down on the scale, and I can't imagine much change in the new version. It kind of makes you wonder what the point of rating these games is at all if the ratings are so arbitrary and unreliable.

I think the "sexual violence" here was simply some text, either a joke or something merely mentioned at some point, which one of the rating-giving people extrapolated to "obvious sexual abuse and slavery and all that" because they felt bored with their lives.

The girls' breasts are not comedy-relief big, therefore they're grade-schoolers and any depiction of them giving or receiving "violence" whilst wearing clothes with even an iota of "sexiness" counts as "sexual violence" -- running a broadsword through the jugular of a 20-meter dragon might not seem like "sexual violence," but it is if the person doing the dragon-slaying is a loli wearing a short skirt (even if her panties don't show for even one frame).

Compare and contrast DOA, which is more violent and has sexier girls in sexier outfits, but got a lower rating because the girls' breasts ARE comedy-relief big; and see also their law that says that any porn that has small-breasted women is illegal.

More like it got down-voted due to total irrelevance with the comment it was in reply to. Seeing how even the story itself had no mention of the US.
But hey, I guess he had to take any chance he could get to bash the US to make himself feel better.

I don't know where people get their ideas about America, but while the people individually may be on average what some could consider prudish (more like very nervous of everything pending mass media approval) or ignorant, free expression is ultimately giving a very high value when it comes to the law. A good chunk of the internet is still based in servers in the US. The reason attempts at legislation receive so much attention is that the legal default is to assume that free speech goes and it is the prosecuting body which has the burden of proving cause for any censorship action or the legislature to change legal definitions (most attempted bills to expand obscenity, etc never see the light of day) and new law is still subject to judicial review which makes it that much more difficult to get something banned or criminalized. Thankfully, the attitudes of the public and their elected officials has been rendered subservient to the higher precedent which favors permissiveness to the point that politically-motivated claims are made irrelevant.

Hey, it's the anon responsible for the cool story above about American legal procedure, here. I wanted to make sure to mention that said cool story was not directed specifically at any specific comment, but things in this line seemed to be going in a relevant direction for my piece regarding several opinions expressed in multiple remarks on several different stories. I'm not a highly patriotic individual, and would never put myself out there to defend the average American mind today, but even I must admit that I sleep a bit easier thanks to a few particularly clever and forward-thinking British-descended slave owning white Imperialists.

don't you dare say such a thing about Australia...man Australia is a fuck death world where EVERYTHING including but not limited to the continent itself, is trying to kill you...Australia is the prototype for catachan...

He is right. That is why it was a prison colony. The British was hoping that the deadly wildlife and climate of Australia would kill every single prisoner in there. It didn't work because the convicts were badass motherfuckers.

Azumango Daioh and Haruhi Suzumiya are rated Ma for high sexual references. I'm pretty sure the Australian classification board just hates anything japanese. Seriously don't judge the rest of us for the way the fuck ups in charge run things.

It's the better alternative as to citing a website in which anyone can submit entries and make shit up at random.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_%28ethology%29 Granted wikipedia is similar... More